What Equity Means at CCA

Complete College America is in a continuous process of identifying how disparities affect the educational opportunities of students based on minoritized social identities (i.e., race, gender, socioeconomic class, sexuality, age, citizenship, religion, physical and mental ability, etc.). Our equitable approach includes developing strategic solutions to take systemic action to address these inequities. We invest in our people to ensure all groups get what they need to grow, contribute, and develop; this also includes CCA’s ability to ensure that resources and opportunities are fairly and equitably distributed and accessed across various identities/ groups of individuals, taking into consideration historical and present-day systemic policies, conditions, and practices that advantage some over others.  

Submit your Best Practices

Submit your best practices, case studies, and policies that contribute to eliminating institutional performance gaps.

Submit

Invitation

Crafting policies and implementing strategies without centering equity can only lead to the status quo of uneven completion rates and inequitable social mobility. This is why CCA is excited to announce its next publications will be focused specifically on the imperative to move towards equity and conditions necessary to implement strategies with an equitable lens.

As such, and to showcase the work currently underway throughout the Alliance, CCA invites you to share:  

  • Best Practices that states, systems, and/or institutions have implemented at scale to eliminate institutional performance gaps that particularly affect minoritized students. 
  • Case Studies that showcase how the planning and implementation of an initiative positively impacted the success of minoritized students. 
  • Policies at the institutional, system, or state level that seek to redress systemic issues that have contributed to inequitable access and success for minoritized students. 

Details

Some of the best practices provided by Alliance members will be highlighted into a workbook that will provide concrete examples of how every CCA strategy should be addressed and implemented with equity in mind.  

Selected case studies and policies will be compiled into a complementary publication to provide greater context, processes, and data related to the effectiveness of strategies and initiatives to eliminate institutional performance gaps. 

We invite submissions from all types of institutions (two and four-year, private and public, HBCU, HSI, TCU, PBI, AAPISI, and PWI) and systems (coordinating and governing).  

Compensation will be provided for case studies selected for publication.  

Submissions will be accepted until August 18, 2021.

For any questions regarding submissions, please contact Nikolas Huot.

CCA and Publications

College America (CCA) is a bold national advocate for dramatically increasing college completion rates and closing institutional performance gaps by working with states and institutions throughout the country and across our national 47-member Alliance. CCA has become synonymous with transitioning a small concept to a nationally scaled strategy using its extensive Alliance to leverage advocacy and policy to move an idea forward. CCA’s successful efforts addressed the most critical systemic barriers to college completion, such as:   

  • Steered the discourse from college access to success and completion (Game Changers and New Rules) 
  • Highlighted the need for postsecondary institutions to provide students with clear guided pathways to help them progress through their degrees (Guided Pathways to Success); 
  • Identified traditional remediation as one of the largest inequitable structural barriers and reformed it to create corequisite support (Bridge to Nowhere, Spanning the Divide and the most recent No Room for Doubt); 
  • Guided institutions and systems to rethink the communication around credit accumulation with 15 to Finish (Time Is the Enemy); and most recently 
  • Led the conversation to bridge higher education and the workforce through Purpose First and its adult learner strategy (College, On Purpose).